WAC expansion: Seattle joins, more schools to follow

Because of a previously-scheduled, couldn’t-miss assignment involving Cal baseball, I was a few minutes late hopping on WAC commissioner Karl Benson’s 1 p.m. teleconference.

And because of a slightly-malfunctioning cell phone, I was unable to ask questions.

But I did listen to the bulk of Benson’s remarks and I did have time to check with league sources to get a feel for the ever-changing landscape.

* As expected, Seattle comes aboard in 2012-13 to give the conference 9 basketball and 7 football schools.

* Also as expected, Benson said the WAC will continue to explore football options over the next 12-24 months — and he said it with a conviction that made me think he expects to add football schools.

* Benson confirmed that the conference has three bowl tie-ins for 2011 and only one, the Humanitarian, for 2012. (I had planned to ask about the ESPN contract but, alas, could not for the reason stated above.)

* Asked what long-term league models have been discussed by the athletic directors and presidents, Benson specifically mentioned a WAC with 12 teams, at least 9 of which play football.

To reach this (unofficial) target, the league would have to add 3 schools, at least 2 of which play football.

* My opinion: Inviting Seattle was a smart move.

Forget the fact that it’s a small school that dropped out of the WCC in 1980 … and has only been back in D-1 for a few years, and couldn’t get the 9-school WCC to offer an invite, and has a microscopic share of the Seattle sports market … and look at it this way:

If you’re the WAC and you have at least one non-football slot to fill and limited options, then Seattle — which plays in KeyArena — is a better pick than Utah Valley.

Why add a second school from Utah before adding a school from Seattle?

Gaining a wintertime foothold in Sonic-less Seattle — no matter how tiny a foothold that may be — is far more important than monopolizing small Utah cities. (The WAC already has Logan, which is really a town.)

* That said, Utah Valley and Cal State-Bakersfield are certainly candidates to join the WAC in the future if non-football schools are needed.

(CSUB is appealing in that it would give the Fresno State-less WAC a presence in the heavily-populated Central Valley. The Fresno and Bakersfield metro areas alone have approx 2 million residents.)

* Based on conversations with sources, both before and after Tuesday’s announcement, the league has IDed the following football schools as potential expansion targets:

* I know, I know: Montana has already spurned the WAC. But the jump from FCS to FBS is partly about economics, and Benson believes he’ll have more options a year from now, perhaps including Montana.

(Certainly, Lamar and Sam Houston State are not ready to make the jump right now.)

“The state of the economy didn’t allow FCS (schools) to make the decision,” Benson said.

* Lamar and Sam Houston are both good bets for future membership, in part because they would provide the WAC with geographic balance that the current members crave.

It’s not difficult to envision them joining the WAC to make a 9-team football league and Utah Valley or CSUB joining to make a 12-team basketball league … and the league splitting into divisions for hoops:

Great info. Unfortunately I don’t see any of those football teams being of great help. I think the WAC should grow to a 12 team football and 14 team all other sports conference.
East: Lamar, Sam Houston, La Tech, UTSA, Texas St, New Mexico St, Denver (non football)
West: SJSU, Utah St, Idaho, Montana, Montana St, Weber St, Seattle (non football)
The only reason Sac St is considered a good candidate is because they have all the sports needed to make the jump. They would just need to add more scholarships. I like Weber better because they are more competitive across the board. All those schools would need to add sports to make the jump. But I think it would be the better move for the future of the WAC.

SPARTAN FAN

Unfortunately for the WAC, especially with football in mind, none of those schools make me say wow. I know we need to add schools but…

TrueTrojan AKA TrueSpartan

GO Spartans. Let’s become the top of the WAC!

SPARTAN FAN

I do expect SJ to rise quickly to the top of the WAC. I’m really hoping to send Nevada, Hawai’i and Fresno on their way with a final loss to Sparta. I wonder how much effort will be put into getting SDSU and Fresno into the normal schedule rotation in the upcoming seasons?

tdmaximus

I’m a long time Spartan fan and Alum and I do not like this WAC that SJS has been left. Tom Bowen and President Mo need to get SJS into the MWC.

TrueTrojan AKA TrueSpartan

I would love to defeat Fresno, Hawai’i and Nevada (in this particular order). Fresno State fans tend to be arrogant and a few years ago the Hawai’i head coach publicly criticized SJSU’s facilities (Spartan Stadium).

People put too much emphasis on what conference we are playing in. Sure, I’d like to be in the Mountain West, but we’re still playing in the FBS conference Western Athletic Conference and we’ve still got a great non-conference schedule: Stanford, UCLA, BYU, Colorado State and Navy.
If you win a bunch of games, it really doesn’t matter what conference you are in. The same holds true if we were to become an independent. Win a bunch of games and you’ll go to a bowl.
Boise State become a national power playing in the WAC. Fresno State became a national name playing in the WAC, mostly because of how competitive they were outside the conference.
It’s not about what conference you’re playing in as long as you are an FBS school. What matters is winning football games. Good things happen to teams who win consistently.
If we win the WAC this year and knock off UCLA, BYU, Colorado State and Navy, for instance, no one will care what conference we play in.
Go Spartans!

OT

So, the WAC picked up 2 WCC rejects (Denver and Seattle are both Jesuit schools and both were blocked by Gonzaga, which does not want “Sub-150 RPI” basketball programs to join the WCC.)

The WAC can’t even get on ESPNU anymore with the exception of the “bracketbuster” game unless the WAC were to play on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays.

The Pac 12 will take over the late night time slots on ESPNU on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays starting with the 2012 season.

As for football, the only way WAC teams can get on the ESPN Networks is if the WAC continues to schedule BYU.

Nick

I don’t see a Sun Belt team leaving that conference to join the WAC. Stranger things have been known to happen, but after this season, the Sun Belt is the stronger conference AND has more bowl tie-ins. To think the Sun Belt won’t work hard to try and retain schools such as North Texas and ULL is naive. In fact, I’d still worry that Louisiana Tech and/or New Mexcio State might see that conference as a stronger – and more stable – alternative.

Weber State? It’s been a winning program as of late, but they didn’t even average 7,000 people per game this season. They are an afterthought to Utah, BYU, and USU – they don’t really represent any media market. Sac State has potential if and only if they start to take facilities and its sports seriously. I don’t see Poly having the support necessary to make the move. The Montana schools have the facilities, but they don’t represent any large media market – there is little to no incentive for them to move up at this time.

OT

For those of you who are high on “420″ in Sparta…

I expect UTSA to get an invite from the BIG EAST before SJSU will get an invite from the Mountain West.

UTSA has the enrollment, the big stadium, the TV market, the geography, the football culture, the money, and the institutional committment (starting with the school president and the AD) to be the next “Boise State”.

Red Cougar

Mt. Hamilton has it right…even with a weaker slate of conference opponents the non-conference scheduling can be intriguing. 2011′s non-league schedule is super – UCLA, Stanford, BYU, Navy, and CSU…if SJSU can manage putting together future skeds as such, it won’t matter.

TrueTrojan AKA TrueSpartan

We need to win against some of these teams: UCLA, Stanford, BYU, Navy, and CSU.

GO Spartans!

SpartanDuffer

A weaker conference does matter … negatively.

With less financial support available the state SJSU athletics will need greater support from fans and businesses. Our Spartans have a difficult time putting butts in seats at Spartan Stadium. A home schedule filled with Lamar and Cal State Barkersfield will make this problem worse. With fewer fans in attendance corporate sponsership and advertising will be even more difficult to attain.

Will somebody please wake me when this nightmare is over?

TrueSpartan AKA TrueTrojan

@ SpartanDuffer,
I am certain that attendance will take care of itself if we start winning.

GO SJSU!

Calfan

Speaking of smoking good Colombian cigars, UTSA to the Big East? Please. How about they win a single football game first.

david

Jon Wilner: you said “Why add a second school from Utah before adding a school from Seattle? Gaining a wintertime foothold in Sonic-less Seattle — no matter how tiny a foothold that may be —
is far more important than monopolizing small Utah cities. (The WAC already has Logan, which is really a town.)

Do you know were UVU is? It is Orem Utah right beside BYU. UVU will never monopolize the market there. So you are right about adding Seattle but really small town no market?

Austin

“If you’re the WAC and you have at least one non-football slot to fill. . .”

We didn’t need to fill a non-football spot. That’s the problem. It’s just another mouth to feed.

Terrible choice by the WAC presidents.

Fortguy

@fred UT-PanAm and Houston Baptist? Really? I don’t see how they benefit any FBS conference. They’re logical replacement schools for the Southland, though, especially if Sam Houston and Lamar were to bolt someday. They’d be doing themselves a favor travel-wise since they’re the only Div. I non-football schools in Texas that don’t belong to the Southland. Since they don’t play football, Southland would still need some school such as UT-Arlington to step up and form a team. UT-PanAm even has a decent market if Univision or Telemundo ever decides to start a sports network.

@Nick I agree. The WAC would currently be seen as a step down for any Sunbelt member. They’re all wanting to look pretty for when C-USA may need to reload if they get raided in any future Big 12, Big East, or MWC expansion.

@OT Wow! I’m amazed at the praise you heap upon UTSA. You left out that they also have a national championship coach (Larry Coker, Miami Hurricane) and that their basketball team went to the NCAA tourney and won in the first round. UTSA clearly has a Boise-like commitment to excellence. Still, I have to agree with Calfan that UTSA not only has to actually play a game but also win. Even if they exceed their low expectations on that level, it would take a decade of tremendous success for them to go anywhere outside the WAC.

What SJSU and the WAC overall needs is for teams to step up and play competitively against national competition and demonstrate that the conference has at least a couple of teams that can join the Big Boys circle. That’s how the conference can raise its national stature.

alchemist

OT:

By your own criteria, if the Big East wants to start adding current lower division schools it will go after Georgia State before UTSA. Georgia State is a better geographic fit for everyone except TCU, they’re already playing football so they’re a couple years ahead in program development, enrollment is comparable, media market is much bigger than UTSA and their stadium is bigger than UTSA’s.

But ideally a major realignment will occur before those invitations go out and the Big East will be defunct so we won’t have to worry about such things.

Kerr

They’d be doing themselves a favor travel-wise since they’re the only Div. I non-football schools in Texas that don’t belong to the Southland. Since they don’t play football, Southland would still need some school such as UT-Arlington to step up and form a team

This article is a perfect example of why I listen to Jon. I have to admit you were spot on. Sometimes I don’t like it and groan but you were right about Seattle and now you have me wondering exactly who those football schools will be more than ever. Reminds me of an old school yard joke;

How do you keep an idiot in suspense?

I’ll tell you tomorrow

prima facie

True Trojan, as a Fresno State alum I can say with certitude (did you see what I did there, Anthony Weiner?) that FSU fans have no cause to be arrogant. Firstly, they aren’t playing; secondly, that program is the biggest fraud in college football, annually teasing folks into thinking they’re good until they inevitably lose to Boise State or Hawaii, on a Tuesday night, no less.

But even if they are arrogant, so what? It’s college sports, not like it’s important or anything. Relax.

WAC’ed

What a sad state of affairs for the WAC. This conference needs some creative destruction.

The WAC should just drop football down to FCS (La Tech would move to the Sun Belt) and then invite all the Big Sky football schools with FBS aspirations. In five years when the economy is better, the entire league can reapply for FBS status.

Finleyshero

Jon:

Are you going to do an article on all the barnstorming Coach Mac has been doing all across the state? Met him in Sacramento this afternoon and was thoroughly impressed. Yesterday he was in Bakersfield.

This guy is definitely the Anti-Tomey.

Great news for SJSU!

OT

@Alchemist:

Georgia State is also on a lot of people’s radar for the following reasons:

1. Big enrollment
2. Big TV Market (#9)
3. Georgia Dome
4. Big name head coach (Bill Curry)
5. Another female AD who thinks big and shoots for the moon (Cheryl Levick, who was the AD at Santa Clara when Toso Pavilion was rebuilt into the Leavey Center.)

Georgia State would be a candidate for Conference USA right away if it were to move up from FCS.

josephpoint

Seems like Sac State would be a nice addition for SJSU to the WAC. Having at least one school in the conference that Spartan fans could attend an away game. Hornet Stadium might not have all nice amentities that big time football coleges have but it does seat 22,000, the 2nd largest stadium in the Big Sky. And in terms of all sports Sac State is the premier Big Sky athletic program with the most conference championships in all sports year after year….34 team championships in the past 5 years. And all 20 Sac State teams are passing the APR standards required by the NCAA. And Sac State draws fans out to games against California schools, of which the Big Sky has none urrently besides Sac.

Go Hornets!!!

coachmm

WAC definitely needs more football bowl tie-ins. It looks like only 1 for 2012.

Nick

This is probably the Big Sky commish’s way of giving a one finger salute, but he has invited USU and Idaho into his conference.

This is it. I love that SU is in the WAC. However it’s a sure sign that SJSU ought to drop sports.

Can’t beat NMSU in football and SU has caught up to our useless basketball team. Why bother? SJSU sucks.

ccrider55

Nick:

Where in that article is there invites to those schools?

tdmaximus

The comment by the Big Sky commissioner is a smoke screen. He will lose Montana and Montana State if the WAC agrees to Montana’s request that Montana State be included. The WAC may have its problems but it is a BCS conference that provides more money to its members via Bowls and the BCS alliance. The story comes out of the Idaho Stateman which is pro-Boise State. Boise State’s President Kustra who has the most power in the MWC has to try and weaken the WAC any chance he gets. Remember, the WAC nearly made President Kustra look stupid.

http://www.cheesemans.com doug cheeseman

Chris Mackey- you should look at yourself in a mirror before you make statements as # 33 in the Mercury news!! I think you must have some serious psychological problems.

OT

The Mountain West and the Big Sky are continuing their assault of the WAC from both sides: the Mountain West from the top and the Big Sky from the bottom. The Big Sky want Utah State and Idaho if they ever were to drop down to FCS.

The WAC will stay alive by cannibalizing the Southland Conference. Lamar, Sam Houston State, and possibly Houston Baptist will be the next ones to join the WAC as football members.

San Jose State is now caught in no-man’s land. Its options are ugly:

1. Stay in the WAC, which will be dominated by the Texas State University system by the time Lamar and Sam Houston State are added (by that time, Texas-San Antonio may be ready to move on, to either Conference USA or the BIG EAST.)

2. Drop down to FCS and be absorbed by the Big Sky in football.

3. Drop football altogether if the Big West are willing to expand to 12 schools. UC San Diego and Cal State Bakersfield are also waiting for the call from the Big West so there will be competition.

Calfan

The WAC will take schools from the Big Sky, it’s only a matter of time. Portland St and Sac St will eventually jump if the Montana schools won’t budge.

http://bleacherreport.com/users/88277-scott-wilson Scott Wilson

If San Jose State were a D-I FCS school right now, everyone would be saying how “perfect” they were for the WAC to invite and “save itself”.

Same could be said for Idaho and Utah State.

The problem is there isn’t much separation between the WAC schools and the Big Sky schools.

Big Planner

The WAC would have been better off standing pat, and waiting until next year, than adding Seattle now. Why add a ninth basketball school? It throws off scheduling and adds nothing but another mouth to feed.

As for future potential football schools, why add Sam Houston without also adding Stephen Austin? The WAC only needs one school in eastern Texas to pair up with Louisiana Tech. That one single school is Lamar.

If the WAC does want Sam Houston, then it also needs to add Stephen Austin, along with Lamar. But my feeling is that only Lamar is needed, as a rival and travel partner for Louisiana Tech, in that specific area.

Then the WAC has to look at the West Coast. Sacramento State and Portland State should be the prime targets, with an eye toward UC Davis and Cal Poly later in the future. They grabbed Seattle too quickly.

Envision a WAC full of pairs instead. Louisiana Tech and Lamar, Texas State and UTSA, New Mexico State and Denver, Utah State and Utah Valley, Idaho and Portland State, San Jose State and Sacramento State.

Then they tell UC Davis, Cal Poly, Montana, and Montana State that they can join at anytime in the future. That is how you build a conference. But the WAC had no plan. Seattle adds nothing the WAC really needs.

Ken Cornwell

For a long time I was one of those that was always looking for the Spartans to get into a “bigger” conference. We were in the PCAA and the WAC back then was what the MWC is now. Then we get into the WAC, but the mountain schools did not want a 16 team conference and split off to create the MWC. So, we are back to a “smaller” conference again with the WAC name. Now there are all these schools being mentioned and scenarios presented about FBS, FCS, etc. Who is going to move up, who is going to move down, on and on. All the Spartans can control is who they schedule to play football against and whether we win or not. If we can start winning consistently, the stands will fill up, the newspapers/blogs/etc. will write about us, probably will get on TV a bit more and good things will happen. There are 36-37 bowl games now, so that means at least 72-74 D-1 schools with at least 6 wins are needed each season to fill out the slots. They need other D-1 schools to play. The Pac-12 has about 7 slots and couldn’t fill them all last season. Other quality schools will continue to schedule games with the Spartans. As Matt “the Mt” indicated, look at our non-league schedule for this season. Pretty impressive! Go to the link below and see who the Spartans have scheduled in the coming years. Again, Army, Navy, Pac-12, MWC, Big 10. Personally I would like to see San Jose State in the Big West for all other sports, creating nice CA based rivalries, with less travel costs and easier for visiting fans to attend games in San Jose, generating more revenue. As for football, the conference doesn’t matter, winning does!

The reason why the WAC keep badgering North Texas is because of Louisiana Tech. When the WAC teams have to play La Tech, they have to fly into Dallas-Fort Worth and bus to Ruston, Louisiana (2 hours away.)

La Tech’s natural geographic rivals are Louisiana-Monroe and Grambling State. Monroe is happy in the Sun Belt. Grambling does not have the resources to go anywhere else besides the SWAC.

Lamar’s natural geographic rivals are McNeese State (10 miles away), Louisiana-Lafayette, and Sam Houston State. McNeese State has no interest whatsoever in moving up to FBS. Lafayette is happy in the Sun Belt.

Stephen F. Austin State isn’t going anywhere without Northwestern State (the schools are 10 miles apart.) Neither have the resources to move up to FBS.

OT

@Big Planner:

Idaho was pushing hard for the WAC to add Seattle.

Without Seattle, Idaho could have bolted to the Big Sky in all sports except football. The Big Sky wants Idaho back.

The Big Sky will have 11 basketball members and 13 football members in 2012-2013. The Big Sky has room for a non-football member.

(Sac State is another school stuck in no-man’s land, having to play basketball in the Big Sky when all its natural geographic rivals are in the Big West. To add insult to injury, UC Davis has the best of both worlds with football in the Big Sky and other sports in the Big West.)

Ash-ATX

Hey OT, check your geography, Lamar and McNeese are not “10 miles apart” and neither are SFA and Northwestern State.
I’m a Lamar graduate and would love to see them invited to the WAC which I think will happen in a couple of years. As far as basketball is concerned, they have the nicest arena in the Southland and have the highest average attendance in the conference (that’s not saying a whole lot, but it’s still true).
Additionally, they just hired Pat Knight who is the biggest possible name that would consider coaching at Lamar (at least while they are stuck in the Southland). The football issue could be a problem as the facilities, while recently renovated, are not ready for the next level. All said though, enrollment continues to rise and the school has made a huge commitment to athletics. Also, you guys should do some research on their baseball team, it’s been a consistently good program. I think Lamar would be a good addition to the WAC, not sure about Sam Houston though…

Calfan

Lamar? Isn’t that the gay black guy in Revenge of the Nerds?

AusTx

OT is correct. UTSA will move over to Conference USA or the Big East before Georgia State because it has no local football competition. UTSA has all the San Antonio media market, while Georgia State has only a small portion of the Atlanta market divided between college and pro teams.
Since TV is such an important factor, UTSA only has to have good attendance (likely they will have higher attendance than all but 3 or 4 FBS schools in Texas this year) and put out a competitive program (Coach Coker is having success competing for recruits with other FBS schools in Texas, save those in the Big 12).
This means the WAC needs to add football schools as quickly as possible. My thought is that the WAC should look at UT Pan Am or Texas A&M – Corpus Christi. Both are in media markets that are desperate for local sports programs. Problem is that neither school has football currently and would need football facilities meeting FBS Division
standards.
As a UTA alum, I was disappointed when UTA dropped football, but it was probably the right choice. UTA, like Georgia State, is located in a media market with lots of options. Until last year, even TCU had problems with low attendance. UTA just doesn’t the ability to draw against the competition it faces in the metroplex.
In the end, Seattle U was the best option for the WAC right now. Over the next year the economy will get better and schools that are hesitant now will be in a better position able to move to the WAC.

CoachM

I don’t like the changes in college football both in the WAC and around the nation. This expansion is beased on greed of money, but these decisions are hurting college sports. Up to this past season, being a member of the WAC had a certain level of prestige. That is no longer the case.
I believe SJSU is prepared to make positive advancements in both football and basketball. But honestly, the Spartans have had too little success for too long of a time period to deserve being anywhere else.
So the current WAC (really starting in 2012) is really a good place for them to be. For the first time they will be competing against similar schools. Secondary schools that live in large markets. Sjsu is always second to cal stanford but live in a huge market. Utsa will never be UT, but of course have access to San Antonio. “Seattle” will never be UW but can tap into seattle market. Denver will never be CU but can try and tap a larger portion of the Denver market.
So, im gonna wait and see what happens. It may be a good thing in the long run, but at this point SJSU has no better options. Put a better product on the field/court and thats all that we can do at this point.

CoachM

I think adding Seattle U. Was a good choice for now…i think adding any more low visibility schools not located in the west/rockies would be a sad mistake. The best choices for the wac would be: ucdavis, cal poly, MT, MSU, sac state, and Weber st.
Non-football schools would be: uop.

Uvu: bad idea!
Csuf: bad idea!
Lbsu: why not?

Usd probably wont leave wcc, but a great wac add with football.

fred

I’ve also seen this idea around the internets (like GW used to say)..and it’s intriguing…
create East/West fball divisions, and give fball only invites to all the eastern FCS schools that are trying to move up, knowing that they will leave for CUSA or the Mtn West at 1st chance…
8 conf games, 7 in division, 1 against other division…reduction in travel…

All this talk about the new WAC and inviting schools from the Big Sky, and Texas does nothing for SJSU. We need to keep our eyes on the MWC, and when that conference comes calling, we will exit with no hesitation. Sac St., UC Davis, CSUB, and Cal Poly will never be rivals with the Spartans, our rivals now live in the MWC and eventually so will Sparta. We need to better SJSU not the WAC, because the WAC is on life support after 2011, and its time to pull the plug.